As much as her lust for knowledge and discovery was assaulting her, Aloe still had to do some chores. Namely cleaning and dressing herself. Now not even the coldness and the dampness of the Tehen River could faze her with toughness on, but in the name of civility and decency, Aloe chose to wear clothes.
Once she had cleared the mess she had made, the cultivator went back to where she had planted the Heartgrowth seed.
"I… I should have expected this," she muttered as she beheld the consequences of her actions.
The hard rock surrounding the patch of soil where she had planted the centennial-cost evolution had now metamorphosed into said soil, suddenly becoming fertile ground. That wasn't a problem, in any case, it was a positive outcome. The issue was with the things that grew in the new soil.
Cure Grass always proved eager to grow, and even if there shouldn't have been any seeds around, the evolved grass had somehow managed to expand in the new soil, covering many square meters of land. But that still wasn't the problem.
The Slowtide was.
In just the handful of minutes she had been out, the bright pink slime had expanded a handful of meters. Significantly less than the grass blades, yes, but there was a difference between an invasive species and a calamitous one.
"Thank the heavens I planted those undergrowths…" Aloe let out a sigh of relief after judging the Slowtide's expansion.
The evolved lichen's growth had been limited thanks to the Radiating Undergrowths acting as natural barriers, though now that side of the riverbed had been completely encased in slime, alongside a great deal of the wall.
"How far has the blood infusion reached?" She meant it as a rhetorical question until she remembered that she could calculate the surface. "Fifteen mansworth… take the formula… Oh heavens! More than two hundred square meters!"
Aloe gasped at the magnitude of her actions.
"I was protesting at having wasted one whole mansworth but now… I just… wow…" She was speechless. "Blood infusions not only makes infertile soil fertile but also has the property of the Forced Growth flowing stance technique, meaning that they also grow things fast. For fifteen temporary mansworth and one maximum I've grown everything this much and made the soil equally fertile…"
It was a waste of vitality, she didn't need that much soil nor to grow that many living beings in such a small time frame, but the fact that she could do so was breathtaking, nonetheless.
"I should plant new undergrowths to stop any further spreading of the Slowtide, but I have time, right now I'm more curious about something else."
The Heartgrowth called for her.
Literally.
Thump. Thump. The wet pulse of the thumping plant made itself audible. Thump. Thump. It moved in a constant thrum, pumping heavens knows what in the ground, heaving and contracting. Thump. Thump. Yes, like a real heart.
"Oh heavens, that's…" She smacked her lips. "I now understand the 'mimic organs' part. That's… very much a heart, yup. Heart."
The visceral image of a vegetable heart pumping in place before her erased any words and coherent thought from her brain. A part of her was drawn to that oscillating movement. Aloe knelt before the green heart and placed her palm on top of it.
Nothing exploded. Nothing killed her. Nothing attacked her. The heart just… continued to perform its heartly task with its nonstop beat.
"I… expected the worst, but now I'm disappointed." The cultivator groaned. "The Heartgrowth does seem to mimic organs, that much is clear now, but what are the limitations of this imitation? Will it change shapes over time like the Chlorotrophy, or does it get assigned one upon conception?"
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The part that interested Aloe more about the Heartgrowth was the 'complimenting the body of the host', but she couldn't help but feel attracted to the otherworldly sight of a heart growing from the earth.
A beating one at that.
Before she noticed, Aloe had grabbed an Aloe Veritas leaf and she started sketching on its parchment surface. One thing she had discovered with time was that depending on the stance she was wielding, she could improve her drawing skills. The sense stance gave her preternatural proprioception, allowing her to shape her thoughts into pictures with increased ease. Even then, she preferred the agility stance as it not only gifted her with impossible flexibility but also enhanced control over her body. A surgeon's steady pulse was a given with that stance.
The name of 'dexterity' she had given for its Infusion name to the agility stance was more accurate than she had originally believed.
Once she was done with her sketches, Aloe – with the knife still in hand – cut the Heartgrowth. A shallow incision where the aorta was supposed to be found in a human heart. She was pleasantly surprised to find a pressurized jet of sap pouring out of the wound.
"It replicates a heart perfectly, even functionality, interesting…" She noted that down alongside her sketches.
The cultivator was amazed too when the wound rapidly closed and healed as if there hadn't been one in the first place.
"Hmm, not as fast as Blossomflame healing, but it is quite fast, nonetheless," Aloe noted that last comment before leaving her knife and the parchment on the ground. "Now for the ugly test."
Without hesitating, Aloe uprooted the Heartgrowth. If it died, oh well, but if it didn't…
"It's still beating, that's good…" She observed the motions of the plucked plant. She had been thorough with the removal so there was no way for the plant to receive sustenance from the soil. "Ah, it's slowing… It has taken a bit to do so, though. How long it was? Five minutes before a complete halt? That's pretty good, I doubt my heart could continue beating five seconds after getting plucked out of my chest, let alone five minutes."
The last test consisted of replanting the evolved living stone, but unfortunately, her expectations were betrayed. Even if the roots weren't damaged and she perfectly restored the plant's previous position, the heart failed to resuscitate.
"How curious," she muttered under her breath. "The plant itself seems to be alive as it has yet to wither, but the functions of the organ it is supposed to mimic have ceased. Further experimentation needed."
There were so many things about the Heartgrowth she wanted to experiment with, yet so little time in a day.
Aloe let the matter rest for now as she had emptied her stomach with her previous regurgitation, so it was time to cook for the first time in a handful of days. She never enjoyed eating nor cooking, and with her current limited resources, that held even truer. Eating a Radiating Undergrowth soup was practically mandatory, she could free herself from the actions of eating and cooking for weeks at a time. It was a win-win scenario for her.
She was exhausted from the Heartgrowth evolution and the massive blood infusion, so after eating, she promptly went to sleep.
When she woke up 'the next day', she felt worse than yesterday. Her excitement had been so great that it had hidden her exhaustion and now her body was suffering from it. Still, she was used to pain and exhaustion, so she didn't allow herself a complete rest. She evolved five Slowtides across the day alongside simple exercises to keep her body running.
Considering her vitality was closing in on three digits, five Slowtide evolutions weren't as oppressive as they had once been. The problem was always when she had to dispose of them by obliterating them out of existence.
The next time she woke up she was rested enough to continue with her experiments.
"Alright, almost two days have gone by, and you've got yet to beat again." She talked to the Heartgrowth with her hands on her hips. "I guess you are truly dead, at least the heart part of you, not the plant itself."
As previously observed, the plant had failed to show traces of withering and was overall healthy, but the organ functions continued to be halted.
"I need to evolve another one." It wasn't the most optimal path to grow her reserves, but curiosity was killing her, she needed to know more about her new plant.
As she had already done it once, evolving a living stone seed wasn't difficult even if she still lacked the necessary vitality to do so. But that didn't mean she didn't regret doing so.
"Oof..." Aloe groaned in pain and clutched her heart after finishing the evolution. "Yeah, I haven't recovered yet. This was a bad idea… Oh, well, the harm's done. Let's plant this bad girl!"
She instantly bounced back from her pain and burrowed the seed into the soil, but she was aware she couldn't keep mistreating her body that way. Her heart had never hurt like that before, and it didn't surprise her, this was her first time dealing with vitality amounts this big. Not only with the Heartgrowth evolution but also with that blood infusion.
The phantom pain of having a mansworth removed from her body in a fell swoop still lingered in her body.
As much as she hated it, she would need to play it safe and slow these following days before she recovered from her non-healable wounds. She was reaching the finish line; she just had to be patient and play her cards correctly. Temperance was a blessing, and impatience a curse.